Bone Dancer
by GO NATURE
Summary: Kurosawa Kenta comes from the generation of Shinobi that found themselves in the middle of the Third Shinobi World War as children. Years later, bloodlust, nerves, nightmares, and loneliness are a fundamental part of life. A chance encounter with a civilian bar owner in Konoha's red light district could be a welcome change. Starts before Konoha Crush, female OC, likely later slash.


Bingo Book

Konohagakure  
Rank: S-rank Jounin  
Age: 25  
Name: Kurosawa Kenta (Bone Dancer)  
Specials:  
Kenjutsu specialist (dual wielder)  
Practices ice release

Third Shinobi World War Hero  
Extreme caution recommended  
Skill levels:  
Taijutsu maxed, ninjutsu very good, genjutsu moderate, stamina maxed, speed very good

My apartment was empty sans a few pieces of furniture. I made it that way so I wouldn't have anything to make a mess of while I was here. I had a bed, a couch, and that was all. I threw my gear and weapons on the couch most days, and threw away any food in the fridge before every mission. Dust covered most surfaces, though I didn't have the products to clean it. I doubted that I would even if I had the products, though.

It wasn't such a wicked place, surprisingly. I'm sure most civilians would expect that I lived in a cave with piles of bones and rotting meat. Maybe a few people chained by their toes for me to torture at my whims. Hell, a few of the genin and chuunin might even believe that, for the looks they send my way when they don't think I'm looking. Sadly, for all of them, I was never so nefarious a soul.

The rumors were possibly fed by my irregular and far in-between appearances in the village, though those were more because of my asocial tendencies. I don't spend a lot of time around other shinobi in my off time (read:none), as I utilize the Jounin only training fields and am not one for wandering around. Since a lot of my missions were solo A-ranks (I suspected the higher ups of doubting my ability to play nice), I really had limited interaction with others.

It was no wonder, really. I didn't have friends and hadn't tried to make any since I was probably five years old. I had no family. I was a lonely person, and had been a lonely person for so long that I no longer sought out the alternative. The alternative, of seeking out new friends or acquaintances, was foreign and vaguely nerve-wracking to me. That was probably the xenophobe in me speaking, though.

I was one of Konoha's top shinobi, though, and I was on missions the majority of the time, back-to-back usually.

I didn't mind. It lulled me into a motive-based mindset. The worst times were times like these, when I ended up alone in this dirty, old apartment.

-

Shinobi surround us. Estimated at seventy. Mission success will turn to failure if all members of team fail to return to headquarters. Four of us against seventy, ratio of 17.5 to 1. Scratch that, one member of time is iryo-nin, likely not qualified for combat. 23.3 to 1, worst case scenario. Chances of full team survival is near zero. Chances of escape is near zero. Will need to fight. Prepare to lose life.

The first shinobi met my blade with his kunai, and I was immediately flanked from behind. At the same time, a scream rang out. From that point, I assumed that the Iryo-nin Aiko, a chuunin, was incapacitated, likely dead. 23.3 to 1 it is. I met the shinobi in front of me with my second blade, his kunai too slow to stop his decapitation. 69 estimated.

My foot lashed out to catch the flanking shinobi, concentrated chakra shooting out of bottom of my boot. What might've been a few broken bones at worst turned into a man split in half. 68 estimated.

A whistling senbon met me seconds before the thrower was upon me. I dodged it fluidly before catching her kick on the 'X' that my two blades made when crossed. Her momentum was heavy, but she wasn't strong enough to so much as budge my stance. She moved to flip forward, but I caught her leg in my hand a fraction of a second after sheathing my longer blade. I slammed her body down against the ground, my chakra enhanced boot following moments later. Her head separated from her body in a single clean motion. 67 estimated.

Four of them were on me in the next moment, their blows coming from every direction. I dug my long blade into the earth, rolling with the kunai and punches. .. It was a pain to try and use a long bladed sword at such short distance, as I'd learned well over the years. One at time I took them down, through a temple-shattering punch, a broken neck, etc.. 63 estimated.

So it went on. There were some times I noticed an increase in my attackers circling, as if their earlier targets were no longer active. I assumed the remainder of my team was gone after the second time that occurred.

I estimated 35 chakra signatures then. 35 to 1. I ripped off the bandages covering the lower half of my face when I had a free second, freeing the sharpened knives that made up all my teeth. When the next shinobi went for my legs, I yanked him up by the neck and tore out his larynx with my teeth before tossing his body away. 29 estimated.

I wasn't immortal, and my chakra was beginning to show that. The repeated usage of the chakra blades was taking a toll, along with the chakra enforced punches and kicks I was using every other second. Heavy breaths clung at my lungs, my stance falling back into a low-centered fighter's stance almost every time I had the opportunity. Exhaustion breeds mistakes, and a kunai embedded in my rib cage showed me the truth of that.

It seemed to boost their morale, and I bared my teeth. Bloodlust began bubbling in my veins like poison, and suddenly the situation was thrown for a loop. The blood dripping from my teeth was exciting, and the corpses surrounding me made me want to sing. Home, I had reached it at least. Like anger's red-tinged blanket, bloodlust took over as a fever dream.

My own heartbeat roared in my ears as I breathed heavily, my eyes wide as I went in for a kill. A broken neck, a dodged fireball. The burning, screaming, cracking bones, whistling metal. A flurry of ripped off limbs, sprays of blood, and soft flesh became a dream. Warm, viscous blood dripped from my chin, my hands, everywhere as I immersed myself. The looks I got in a person's last moments, _fear, terror,_ fed my profound excitement.

Everything happens so quick, and I force myself to keep up with it. _More, more, more!_ A skin stretching grin pulls at my lips as I rip the limbs off of a shinobi. _Let this moment last forever!_ Almost feverishly I chase after each target, and my last enemy runs when I turn to her.

The last chakra signature faded as I ripped open her abdominal cavity, chakra allowing my fingers to tear her skin and muscles like hot bread. Sticky blood seemed to envelope me, the iron tang prominent in my nose right before feces and even less so, stomach acid. There's too many ripped open chest cavities and strewn intestines to avoid the two.

Bloodlust, the uncontrollable desire to kill or maim others. Whether unto me it had been a curse or a blessing, it was hard to tell when it came to the life I led. In that moment, as I came down from what felt like an induced high, it felt like a curse.

The adrenalin that had made me burn leaves me cold and a little empty. Like a toy soldier that had ran out of batteries. Pain and exhaustion settle in as the fog leaves my mind. Now, all I could do was stare at the horror that met my conscious mind whenever I came down from bloodlust. A nightmare manufactured and put in place by myself.

Glassy eyes seemed to watch me from all corners of the red-stained clearing. From my count, I'd killed 62 of them. 62 of these eyes watched me accusingly. I was alone though, so I didn't make any attempt to stop myself from emptying the contents of my stomach. So much blood covered me, a significant fraction of it mine. I was lightheaded and weak; my chakra stores nearly depleted. Overall, not in a good place.

Years ago, I'd earned the name Bone Dancer. After a battle like this, I wouldn't have stopped when all my enemies were dead. I would have ripped open rib cages, stomped on the skulls of the dead, ripped limbs off of bodies with the glee of a child ripping the wings off of a fallen insect. I was called a dancer the first time because those that saw me said it looked like I was doing some strange dance, moving around and stomping. _Bone_ Dancer, someone must've corrected when they realized on what.

In that time, burning rage filled me constantly, and the playground that the Third Shinobi World War offered me served as my place to vent.

Ironically, I probably would have died without the war. I had so much bloodlust, and so often I felt it aimed at civilians and fellow Konoha shinobi. The promise of kills in the near future got me through many days. Without that promise, I likely would've died after being branded a traitor for killing someone.

Rage that was violent, rage that felt uncontrollable, rage that changed my own personality it sometimes seemed. It still manifested sometimes, like today in the form of bloodlust, but never so badly as it once had been.

There was a light chill in the air as night time drew near, and the blood that had soaked into my clothes cooled right along with it. My breathing was still ragged despite my body cooling down, injuries taking their toll. I had received an incredible number of superficial wounds, from barely dodged kunai and such, along with a few deeper wounds. Nothing that would impede me on my way back to Konoha, though, so I ignored them for the time being. After wiping down both of my blades and sheathing them on my back, I went to find my teammates.

The iryo-nin died with a scared look on her face. Her wide open eyes felt like a punch in the gut, and I fought the urge to throw up again. She wasn't meant for fighting, and her death wasn't justified. I felt a muted grief, and I allowed it. Our enemies were currently gone, and though I wouldn't let myself become unaware or lose perspective, she deserved my grief at the very least.

I crouched down next to her body as I drew out a blood-supplement tablet. I ground it up and dropped it into my canteen before throwing it back. A food-pill would increase my metabolism, chakra, energy, etc., but what with my slowly bleeding-out body, I went without.

I clipped the canteen back to my pack with a sigh. I found the other two shinobi cold. One had his throat slit, the other I couldn't tell from a glance. Pain clenched at my heart and scratched at my throat. They didn't deserve this. They trusted me. They were just chuunin, they should have been able to trust I would keep them safe. They were all teenagers. The mission was already done, scroll in hand. I should've protected them. They shouldn't ... a sigh slid softly out of my throat as I averted my eyes.

Deaths followed me like moths to a flame. As if my life string was so strong, all those around mine frayed and snapped. I was tired of it.

Cool apathy came easily, like pulling a familiar blanket around my shoulders. It was easier to watch from a detached perspective as I slung the two chuunin onto one shoulder. Feeling their blood drip down onto me didn't invoke any reaction. I held them there with that arm, adjusting until the bodies were stable enough. I made my way back to the medic-nin, grunting as I slid her onto my other shoulder. Pain lanced up my arm and across my shoulder, but I just tightened my grip on the girl with a grimace.

During the battle, something had happened to my arm. I'd ignored it so far, shifting to primarily using my other hard to fight. Through reinforcing it with chakra, it barely held me back. Now I didn't have the chakra to spare, so I let it be. I clenched my jaw and accepted the pain as a fraction of what I should feel. If there was any fairness in this world, someone like me would have died a long time ago.

With a secure hold on the three bodies, I returned to the trees, leaving behind the corpses of 70 odd shinobi. Limbs, intestines, and chunks of odd flesh and brain matter were strewn about, blood covering the clearing as a whole. It was a piece of gruesome art that most who knew me would recognize. They'd say that I'd danced on their bones surely, drunken on their blood, laughing as I plucked out their eyes. I wouldn't disagree. My actions in the past more than warranted the stories, and I wasn't exactly in complete remedial.

Night came quickly after the sun dipped below the horizon. I was relatively close to Konoha, as we'd been returning when the shinobi had caught up to us. I had to stop a few times when I nearly slipped off the trees, catching my breath for a minute.

The famous Konoha ninja Kurosawa Kenta could barely tree run. I didn't matter though, the lights of Konoha greeted me in the distance. The mission would succeed, and I told the corpses on my shoulders that they did not die in vain. Their sacrifices were worthy, and their home would remember them as heroes.

I didn't pass through the gates, instead going straight over the walls. My chakra signature would probably be recognized, anyway. I passed over the roofs of civilians, a single step taking me to the next roof most of the time.

I took the bodies to the morgue. It was a morgue for shinobi, but even then the older-than-typical genin manning the post stared at me like some sort of demon. Carrying three corpses and looking like one myself probably. After a shock he helped me with the bodies, moving them to the metal gurneys that stood ready.

"You know their names?" I asked, softspoken as I stared down at the genin despondently. If not, I would tell him their names and ranks.

"I... I went to the academy with two of them, and the third is one of my sisters friends." He said, looking pale. Probably in shock, but I couldn't help there. I'd probably make it worse, if anything. Instead, I took his reply for confirmation, turning to leave. I didn't get a step further before he asked, "How did they die?"

I was turned away from him, and I was glad for it. I didn't want to see his face.

"They died well, in battle." I was gone before he could reply. The bloody remnants of my face bandages hung around my neck, but I wrapped them around the lower half of my face all the same as I left. The cold, wet material clung to my face, giving me one last line of defense from others.

A/N:

Thank you for getting this far! A few remarks on the story so far:

I know Kenta is a male Japanese name, not female. If anyone's curious, Kenta comes from the kanji _ken_ , meaning healthy and strong, and the kanji _ta_ , meaning thick and big. It's not a symbolic name for the character, and doesn't go beyond face value as a name.

I very possibly misunderstood some terminology or techniques, so let me know if you caught something that bothers you. I'll change it as soon as I get a chance.

Furthermore, regarding techniques, I took the idea for chakra blades (used by Kabuto, for example) and figured that theoretically, the same would be useable from the feet.

 _Xenophobe_ is interpreted as fear of foreigners or foreign customs a lot, but in this context I meant it more as fear of the unknown.

\- Since my OC is a kenjutsu user and a weird number of known kenjutsu users in Naruto have sharp teeth (mostly looking at you, Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist), I figure it's not a huge stretch. Maybe their pointy teeth as children make them want more pointy things ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ (and it makes me feel not so bad about giving my OC a cliché characteristic).

Anyway, thanks for reading, and feedback is always appreciated!

-GO NATURE!


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